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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 September 2019
This article addresses several historiographical questions about narratives of nineteenth-century Italian opera by discussing the international career of prima donna Fanny Tacchinardi-Persiani during the 1830s and 1840s. A number of hitherto overlooked letters between the singer and Carlo Balocchino, impresario of the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna, provide important insights into Tacchinardi-Persiani's strategies of self-representation in the context of a dynamic operatic network that included the Italian States, Vienna, Paris and London. By revealing shifting power dynamics between opera impresarios, performers and composers, these letters, read in parallel with reviews and other writings of the time, offer a fresh look at the economic, ideological and artistic factors that contributed to the shifting geography of the European operatic landscape in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Claudio Vellutini, The University of British Columbia, Canada; claudio.vellutini@ubc.ca.
I wish to thank Emanuele Senici, Jillian Rogers, Elizabeth Parker, Kirby Haugland, Elizabeth Elmi and the anonymous readers of this journal for their help, comments and suggestions during the preparation of this article. I would also like to acknowledge the generous financial support from the University of Chicago, the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music (Bloomington, IN) and the University of British Columbia.
1 See Ciarlantini, Paola, Giuseppe Persiani e Fanny Tacchinardi: Due protagonisti del melodramma romantico (Ancona, 1988), 61Google Scholar.
2 See the chronology of her performances in Kaufmann, Thomas, ‘Giuseppe and Fanny Persiani’, Donizetti Society Journal 6 (1988), 139–49Google Scholar.
3 Tebaldini, Giovanni, ‘Giuseppe Persiani and Fanny Tacchinardi’, Rivista Musicale Italiana 12 (1905), 587Google Scholar.
4 See Rosselli, John, Singers of Italian Opera: The History of a Profession (Cambridge, 1992), 94–5Google Scholar, and Rutherford, Susan, The Prima Donna and Opera, 1815–1930 (Cambridge, 2006), 56Google Scholar. See also Roberta Montemorra Marvin's discussion of Viardot's and Tadolini's London biographies in ‘Idealizing the Prima Donna in Mid-Victorian London’, in The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Hilary Poriss and Rachel Cowgill (New York, 2006), 21–41.
5 See Ciarlantini, Giuseppe Persiani, and Kaufmann, ‘Giuseppe and Fanny Persiani’. Giovanni Tebaldini's essay, quoted above, stood apart from the other two works, since it was originally intended as a celebratory homage to Persiani on the centennial of his birth.
6 Kaufmann, ‘Giuseppe and Fanny Persiani’, 125.
7 A full list of Persiani's operas is included in Kaufmann, ‘Giuseppe and Fanny Persiani’, 133–5.
8 Ciarlantini, Giuseppe Persiani, 136, states that ‘of the two of them, Persiani was the one who sacrificed himself’ (Tra i due fu Persiani a sacrificarsi).
9 Ciarlantini, Giuseppe Persiani, 146–7, where the letter, dated 21 January 1838 and now housed at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, is transcribed in full. A digital reproduction of the letter is available online: see gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b530483741?rk=21459;2.
10 Ciarlantini, Giuseppe Perisani, 146: ‘Ciò mi autorizza a supporre che ella, al contrario del marito e del padre, non amasse scrivere.’
11 See Jahn, Michael, Die Wiener Hofoper von 1836 bis 1848: Die Ära Balochino – Merelli (Vienna, 2004)Google Scholar.
12 John Rosselli mentions the correspondence multiple times in his seminal work, The Opera Industry in Italy from Cimarosa to Verdi (Cambridge, 1984), as well as in ‘Opera Production, 1780–1880’, in The History of Italian Opera: Opera Production and Its Resources, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago, 1998), 160.
13 To my knowledge, these were the only pieces of the collection that have been published in full: see Schlitzer, Franco, Un piccolo carteggio inedito di Rossini con un impresario italiano di Vienna (Florence, 1954)Google Scholar; Zavadini, Guido, Donizetti: Vita – Musiche – Epistolario (Bergamo, 1948)Google Scholar; Becker, Heinz und Becker, Gudrun, eds, Giacomo Meyerbeer: Briefwechsel und Tagebücher, Vol. 4: 1846–1849 (Berlin and New York, 1985)Google Scholar. A few documents pertaining to Donizetti, which were not included in the published correspondence of the composer, are transcribed and commented on in Claudio Vellutini, ‘Cultural Engineering: Italian Opera in Vienna, 1816–1848’ (PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 2015). One of them had been previously published with a few omissions, and without any attempt to provide information about its chronological position, in Kantner, Leopold, ‘Gaetano Donizetti a Vienna’, in Gaetano Donizetti, ed. Tintori, Giampiero (Milan, 1983), 56Google Scholar.
14 For a historiographical discussion of the matter, see the introduction to Vellutini, ‘Cultural Engineering’, 1–36.
15 Ciarlantini, Giuseppe Persiani, 135–7 and 163–4. Most of her discussion of Tacchinardi-Persiani's seasons in Vienna is based on second-hand accounts published in Italian newspapers. For the 1845 season, she also relies on the few passages from Donizetti's correspondence from Vienna that mention the prima donna.
16 The letters dated 30 March 1837 and 3 July 1837 discuss the cost of the parts for Lucia; the letters of 24 June 1837 and 26 April 1845 address Fanny's health; the Persianis’ return to Italy is described in the letter of 10 July 1837.
17 On Lanari's business, see De Angelis, Marcello, Le carte dell'impresario: Melodramma e costume teatrale nell'Ottocento (Florence, 1982)Google Scholar. Balocchino also stepped in for Lanari in the management of the Teatro La Pergola in Florence shortly before he was appointed impresario of the Kärntnertortheater: see Angelis, Marcello De, La musica del Granduca: Vita musicale e correnti critiche a Firenze 1800–1855 (Florence, 1978), 28–31Google Scholar.
18 Even her year of birth, probably 1812, is contested: see Ciarlantini, Giuseppe Persiani, 61.
19 ‘Fanny s'innamorò d'un bel giovanotto … Giuseppe Persiani di Recanati, autore di dodici opere, tutte volate via come foglie d'autunno … Il padre avvezzo a trattar coi grandi della Corte toscana, sognava per la figlia diletta un marito con tanto di corona e carrozza. Si oppose all'idea della figliuola; ma non poté piegarla. Costei si accasciò, si chiuse in un ostile silenzio, rifiutando cibo e bevande; “voleva morire” … I medici presentarono allora al padre spaventato (come nelle commedie d'una volta) il dilemma: “O lasci sposare la ragazza, o non possiamo rispondere delle conseguenze.”’ Barbiera, Raffaello, Vite ardenti nel teatro (Rome, 1931)Google Scholar, quoted in Ciarlantini, Giuseppe Persiani, 46.
20 Francesco Regli, ‘Tacchinardi-Persiani, Fanny’, in Dizionario biografico dei più celebri poeti ed artisti melodrammatici, tragici e comici, maestri, concertisti, coreografi, mimi, ballerini, scenografi, giornalisti, impresarii, ecc. ecc. che fiorirono in Italia dal 1800 al 1860 (Turin, 1860), 514.
21 Lanari's entrepreneurial activity, including the 1832 season in Livorno, is discussed in De Angelis, Le carte dell'impresario, 244; for his partnership with Tacchinardi, see Michelli, Paolo, I fili della scena: Alessandro Lanari: il carteggio con gli impresari e delegati (1820–1830) (Lucca, 2009), 81–96Google Scholar.
22 For a comprehensive chronology of Tacchinardi-Persiani's performances, see Kaufmann, ‘Giuseppe and Fanny Persiani’, 139–49.
23 See Tacchinardi's numerous letters to Lanari in Bonaventura, Arnaldo, ‘Lettere inedite di Nicola Tacchinardi raccolte e commentate’, Liburni Civitas 6 (1933), 286–302Google Scholar, several of which reveal Tacchinardi's strategies to optimise the conditions under which his daughter performed.
24 Kaufmann, ‘Giuseppe and Fanny Persiani’, 139–41.
25 Kaufmann, ‘Giuseppe and Fanny Persiani’, 139–41. After the prima donna's departure from Italy, Donizetti only composed new arias for her to be inserted into his scores, most notably the cavatina ‘O luce di quest'anima’ for the Paris premiere of Linda di Chamounix (1842).
26 Donizetti to Lanari, 28 October 1833 and 9 November 1833, in Zavadini, , Donizetti: Vita – Musiche – Epistolario (Bergamo, 1948), 338–9Google Scholar.
27 ‘La voce di questa Prima Donna non è molto forte; ma tanto limpida, e così intonata e pura, che si gode tutto il canto, e nulla si perde di quello che eseguisce con infinita precisione e buon gusto … Animata che sarà la sua azione col progredire degli anni, riunirà tutte le perfezioni d'un gran soggetto. Qual diletto non ti dà Essa, con quelle voci sostenute e rinforzate che sembrano prodotte da un Campanello del più fino metallo, che ora terminano con uno smorzo purissimo, ed intonato, ed ora con ornamenti d'un gusto squisito, di una esecuzione facile perfetta e graziosa.’ The review, published on 5 March 1834, is quoted in full in Bini, Annalisa and Commons, Jeremy, Le prime rappresentazioni delle opere di Donizetti nella stampa coeva (Milan, 1997), 400–1Google Scholar. For a discussion of how Tacchinardi-Persiani's abilities affected the vocal writing in the role of Rosmonda, see Ciarlantini, Giuseppe Persiani, 73–6. I will discuss Rosmonda's cavatina in relation to Lucia di Lammermoor later in this article.
28 The article, originally published on 27 November 1847, is reproduced in full in Kaufmann, ‘Giuseppe and Fanny Persiani’, 150–1. All the quotations in this paragraph are taken from Kaufmann's essay.
29 An exception for this critic was Tacchinardi-Persiani's execution of the role of Zerlina, which he deemed too low for her voice and stylistically unfit for her penchant for elaborate ornamentation.
30 The relationship between prima donnas’ acting and feminine ideals in nineteenth-century culture is discussed at greater length in Rutherford, The Prima Donna and Opera, 259–66.
31 See Bini and Commons, Le prime rappresentazioni, and in particular the reviews by Francesco Regli in Il pirata, 9 October 1835, and by the Neapolitan correspondent of L'eco, 14 October 1835.
32 See Poriss, Hilary, ‘A Madwoman's Choice: Aria Substitution in Lucia di Lammermoor’, Cambridge Opera Journal 13 (2001), 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar, fn.7.
33 See Ashbrook, William, ‘Popular Success, the Critics and Fame: The Early Careers of “Lucia di Lammermoor” and “Belisario”’, Cambridge Opera Journal 2 (1990), 70–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
34 All the information provided in this paragraph is derived from Marchesi's letter to Balocchino, 17 June 1836, Wienbibliothek im Rathaus (henceforth A-Wst), H.I.N. 10259; and from the impresario's reply, 22 June 1836, A-Wst, H.I.N. 10405. In the online catalogue of the library, the former is erroneously dated 17 July.
35 Ciarlantini, Giuseppe Persiani, 129, reports that she received 32,000 francs in Venice.
36 The exchange between Marchesi and Balocchino revolves by and large around the question whether or not Merelli really wants to engage Tacchinardi-Persiani. Fanny overtly complains about Merelli's unresponsiveness in her first letter to Balocchino, transcribed in Appendix, section B.
37 A notable exception is Ciarlantini's discussion of the only autograph letter by Fanny that she knew (Giuseppe Persiani, 147). Here the prima donna is described as ‘a woman with an extroverted and determined character, very pragmatic, not greedy, but careful with money’ (‘una donna dal carattere estroverso e deciso, molto concreta, non avida ma attenta al denaro’), a description I find congruent with the personality traits that emerge from her correspondence with Balocchino.
38 Letter from Tacchinardi-Persiani to Balocchino, 22 February 1837, A-Wst H.I.N. 10274: see Appendix, section B, letter 1, where Balocchino's reply is also provided.
39 Letter to Balocchino, 3 March 1837, A-Wst H.I.N. 10275: see Appendix, section B, letter 2.
40 Letter draft, 8 March 1837, H.I.N. 10421: see Appendix, section B, letter 3. The last sentence, which was later crossed out, warned Tacchinardi-Persiani that Beatrice di Tenda would not have been a wise choice, since the opera had been unsuccessfully produced in German.
41 According to newspaper reports (e.g. Allgemeine Theater-Zeitung on 4, 7 and 10 April 1837), the beginning of the season was delayed due to the illness of several singers, including the primi tenori of the company. It is possible that, once performances could finally begin, Balocchino and Merelli decided not to test the audience's patience any further by reviving an ‘old opera’, and opted for Lucia instead. Nonetheless, Tacchinardi-Persiani could have refused to take part in the production, since, as her letters reveal, her contract established that she had the right to choose her debut opera.
42 See the reviews published in the Allgemeine Theater-Zeitung (15 April 1837), 302–3; Der Wanderer (15 April 1837), 359 and (6 May 1837) 431; Der Sammler (22 April 1837), 191–2; and the Wiener Zeitschrift für Kunst, Literatur, Theater und Mode (27 April 1837), 397–8. Der Wanderer also published a retrospective article about Balocchino's and Merelli's impresa of the Kärntnertortheater, in which the prima donna's ‘unique virtuosity’ (seltene Virtuosität) is praised as the highlight of the 1837 Italian opera season: see Der Wanderer (2 April 1838), 315.
43 For the substitution of the mad scene cabaletta, see the Allgemeine Theater-Zeitung (15 April 1837) (the critic erroneously refers to its title as ‘Spargi di qualche pianto’), and the Wiener Zeitschrift für Kunst, Literatur, Theater und Mode (27 April 1837), 397–8. The first article credits Giuseppe Persiani as the author of the substitution aria. No trace of this piece seems to survive. The Vienna production, however, used the same performing materials as the Venice production, which the Persianis had brought with them from Italy (see Balocchino's letter to Giuseppe Persiani, 30 March 1837, A-Wst, H.I.N. 10423, and Persiani's note to the impresario, 3 July 1837, A-Wst, H.I.N. 10286). It is worth asking, therefore, whether Giuseppe composed his version of Lucia's mad scene for La Fenice. Because his cabaletta allegedly featured the same text as the original piece, it is impossible to establish from the sole extant libretto whether it was introduced prior to the production at the Kärntnertortheater.
44 The cover page of Diabelli's score reads: ‘CAVATINE. / ( Torna, o torna, caro oggetto ) * ( Komm, o Trauter, kehre wieder) eingelegt und gesungen von Mad: Tacchinardi-Persiani in der Oper: / LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR, von DONIZETTI / Wien, bei A.Diabelli und Comp.Graben No 1133.’ Plate number 6335, [1837]. Mechetti's print features the title: ‘CAVATINA / (Torna, o torna, caro oggetto) * (Theurer, komm'in meine Arme.) / eseguita dalla Signora TACCHINARDI-PERSIANI / coi suoi abbellimenti nell'Opera: LUCIA di LAMMERMOOR, / del Maestro DONIZETTI.’ Plate number 2888, [1838]. In both cases, a German translation of the text is provided along with the Italian version adapted to fit the dramatic context of Lucia di Lammermoor: see, for example, the reference to ‘Edgardo’ in the cabaletta. The publication dates of the two prints are derived from Alexander Weinmann, Verlagsverzeichnis Pietro Mechetti quondam Carlo (Vienna, 1966), and Weinmann, Verlagsverzeichnis ANTON DIABELLI & Co. (1824 bis 1840) (Vienna, 1985).
45 See, for instance, Manuel Garcia fils, Treatise on the Art of Singing: A Compendious Method of Instruction, ed. Albert García (London, 1924), 58. For an introduction to the nineteenth-century practice of vocal ornamentation, see Crutchfield, Will, ‘Voices’, in Performance Practice: Music after 1600, Part 3: The 19th Century, ed. Brown, Howard Mayer and Sadie, Stanley (New York, 1990), 424–58Google Scholar.
46 See, for instance, the ornamentations for Almaviva's cavatina ‘Ecco ridente in cielo’ from Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia, provided in Garcia's treatise (at 57–8 in the English edition), Eugenia Tadolini's embellishments for Adina's ‘Prendi per me sei libero’ from Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore reproduced in Vellutini, Claudio, ‘Adina par excellence: Eugenia Tadolini and the Performing Tradition of Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore in Vienna’, 19th-Century Music 38 (2014), 15–17Google Scholar, and the collection Embellished Opera Arias, ed. Austin Caswell (Madison, 1989).
47 In addition to the review mentioned at fn. 27, the Giornale di commercio e d'industria published another on 20 March 1834 mentioning that Tacchinardi-Persiani introduced new embellishments every night and praises them for their variety and beauty. A more detailed discussion of Viennese critical reactions to Tacchinardi-Persiani's inclination for ornamentation is provided below.
48 See Jahn, Michael, Di tanti palpiti … Italiener in Wien (Vienna, 2006), 212Google Scholar.
49 See, for instance, the review in the Allgemeine Theater-Zeitung (1 May 1837), 346, whose author, though paying Tacchinardi-Persiani her due, closes on a note of disappointment by observing that ‘the dramatic singer shared only a little of the extraordinary success of the vocalist’ (An diesem außerordentlichen Erfolge der Gesangskünstlerin hatte die dramatische Sängerin nur geringen Antheil). On the other hand, Tadolini's fame in Vienna was the result of solid technique, graceful style, thoughtful interpretation and gifts as a singing actress of comic and naïve roles: see Vellutini ‘Adina par excellence’, 12–13.
50 A comparison between Tacchinardi-Persiani, Amalia Schütz-Oldosi and Sophie Schoberlechner Dall'Occa was published in Der Wanderer on 4 July 1838. Almost a year later, on 3 July 1839, Der Wanderer favourably discussed Carolina Unger's grandiose (großartig) rendition of Beatrice di Tenda in relation to Tacchinardi-Persiani's delicate (zierlich) portrayal.
51 See Soubies, Albert, Le Théâtre-Italien de 1801 à 1913 (Paris, 1913), 38–40Google Scholar. For a more recent discussion of the circulation of scores and personnel between the two institutions, see Roccatagliati, Alessandro, ‘Parigi-Londra andata e ritorno: Musiche, cantanti e faccendieri fra i teatri d'opera italiana (1830–38)’, in Pensieri per un maestro, ed. La Via, Stefano and Parker, Roger (Turin, 2002), 193–209Google Scholar. On Émile Laurent's appointment at the head of the Théâtre-Italien, see Mongrédien, Jean, Le Théâtre-Italien de Paris de 1801 à 1831: Chronologie et documents, 8 vols (Lyon, 2008), 7: 265–6Google Scholar.
52 See Kaufmann, ‘Giuseppe and Fanny Persiani’, 141–5. The only exception to this trend is the 1842 season, which saw Tacchinardi-Persiani's debut in three new roles: Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte and Linda in the Paris revision of Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix.
53 See Harris-Warrick, Rebecca, ‘Lucia Goes to Paris: A Tale of Three Theaters’, in Music, Theater, and Cultural Transfer: Paris, 1830–1914, ed. Everist, Mark and Fauser, Annegret (Chicago, 2009), 203–4Google Scholar, where she points out that Tacchinardi-Persiani's substitute aria from Rosmonda d'Inghilterra met with particular success since the Paris premiere of the opera in 1837. When Donizetti reworked the opera for the Théâtre de la Renaissance (with the nineteen-year-old soprano Anna Thillon in the title role), he accepted Tacchinardi-Persiani's modification and substituted what was originally ‘Regnava nel silenzio’ with a translated version of Rosmonda's cavatina ‘Perché non ho del vento’.
54 ‘Somehow, you entered into obligations with these most Excellent Ministers of State, and since I know your extreme discretion, I cannot but rejoice for the positive outcome of this matter’ (‘Ella ha in certo qual modo contratto cogli Eccellmi Sigri Ministri di stato, un obligo su tale particolare, e conoscendo io la somma di lei delicatezza, non posso che bearmi anticipatamente del buon effetto della cosa’). Balocchino's letter to Tacchinardi-Persiani, 18 December 1837, A-Wst, H.I.N. 10429. In a letter draft, written on the same document and dated 1 February 1838, Balocchino mentions again ‘these most excellent Ministers, who took great interest in your return to Vienna during the spring of 1839’ (‘questi eccel[lentissi]mi S[ignori] Min[ist]ri, che tanto s'interessarono onde ella venga a Vienna pella [sic] Prim[ave]ra 1839’). On 20 June 1838, Balocchino reminds Tacchinardi-Persiani of ‘the unquestionable proof of affection that the imperial court, the most illustrious ministers, and the audience of this capital unanimously demonstrated during the spring of 1837’ (A-Wst, H.I.N. 10433: see Appendix, section B, letter 4, for full text). A few months later, on 6 March 1839, he specified that ‘I promptly justified myself and you with these most Excellent Ministers’ (‘non mancai di giustificare me stesso, e lei presso questi Eccellentissimi Ministri’), A-Wst, H.I.N. 10441.
55 For a thorough discussion of the relationship between Habsburg cultural policies and Viennese operatic life in the first half of the nineteenth century, see Vellutini, ‘Cultural Engineering’.
56 Balocchino's letter, 27 April 1839, A-Wst, H.I.N. 10443: see Appendix, section B, letter 6.
57 ‘di non aver potuto ottenere un permesso di tre mesi, onde dimostrare all'Illustr[issim]i sig[no]ri Ministri il mio zelo, non che l'attaccamento al cortese pubblico, e il buon volere alle di lei premure’. Tacchinardi-Persiani to Balocchino, 12 July 1838: A-Wst, H.I.N. 10276.
58 Because the Vienna seasons would overlap with the London residency of the company of the Théâtre-Italien, in a lost letter she must have informed Balocchino that her return to the Kärntnertortheater was dependent on the effects that the English weather had had on her health. The impresario brought up this point in the letter addressed to Tacchinardi-Persiani on 20 June 1838.
59 See Forbes, Elizabeth, Mario and Grisi: A Biography (London, 1985)Google Scholar.
60 Forbes denies that there was any rivalry between Grisi and Tacchinardi-Persiani (Forbes, Mario and Grisi, 37), while the matter is ignored altogether in Ciarlantini's biography of the Persianis. Tacchinardi-Persiani relinquished the role of Elvira in I puritani – a role that Grisi had created at the opera's premiere in 1835 – and took on Rosina in Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia, which Grisi had also frequently performed. Fanny agreed to appear as Zerlina to Grisi's Donna Anna, but she was accorded the leading role of Carolina in Cimarosa's Il matrimonio segreto with Grisi in the lesser role of Elisetta.
61 Tacchinardi-Persiani to Balocchino, 14 April 1839: see Appendix B, letter 5.
62 Tacchinardi-Persiani to Balocchino, 14 April 1839.
63 See Appendix, section B for the following letters from Tacchinardi-Persiani to Balocchino: 14 April 1839; 28 May 1839; 26 April 1842.
64 Tacchinardi-Persiani to Balocchino, 14 April 1839.
65 Tacchinardi-Persiani to Balocchino, 26 April 1842.
66 This financial metaphor is not accidental. Céline Frigau Manning has convincingly discussed its importance and use in the context of nineteenth-century French operatic market: see her Chanteurs en scène: L’oeil du spectateur au Théâtre-Italien (1815–1848) (Paris, 2014), 237–9.
67 Both these points are discussed in David Kuchta, ‘The Making of the Self-Made Man, 1750–1850’, ch. 6 of his The Three-Piece Suit and Modern Masculinity: England, 1550–1850 (Berkeley, 2002).
68 See Hilary Poriss, ‘Prima Donnas and the Performance of Altruism’, in The Arts of the Prima Donna, ed. Poriss and Cowgill, 42–60.
69 Tacchinardi-Persiani to Balocchino, 14 April and 28 May 1839.
70 Tacchinardi-Persiani to Balocchino, 28 May 1842: see Appendix, section B, letter 7.
71 ‘e quale sarebbe quell'artista che senza veruna prova potrebbe sostenere un repertorio di 12. e più Opere Classiche?’ Tacchinardi-Persiani to Balocchino, 28 May 1842.
72 ‘non poteva minimamente rinunciare all'acquisto di Madme Persiani, per la ventura stagione, prima perché è troppo amata da questo pubblico quindi perché ha un repertorio di 10 Opere, le parti delle quali non potrebbesi affidarle ad altre, senza il rischio di compromettere la stagion ventura’. Tacchinardi-Persiani to Balocchino, 12 June 1842.
73 Throughout Mario and Grisi, Elizabeth Forbes provides an almost day-by-day reconstruction of the two singers’ concert schedules in England.
74 See Vellutini, ‘Cultural Engineering’, especially ch. 1, 37–102, which provides a detailed discussion of the ambivalence of Austrian state officials for the logic of capitalist entrepreneurship.
75 See Everist, Mark, ‘The Music of Power: Parisian Opera and the Politics of Genre, 1806–1864’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 67 (2014), 685–734CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
76 The decision to share the company of the Théâtre-Italien with London was made by the impresario Émile Laurent after the French government curtailed the endowment of the institution to 60,000 francs a year: see Soubies, Le Théâtre-Italien, 40.
77 Tacchinardi-Persiani to Balocchino, 16 April 1844.
78 She outlined her conditions in a letter dated 8 May 1844: 30,000 francs (50 per cent more than she was paid in 1837) and free lodging. Her request for a full benefit performance was only partially granted, as the contract draft sent to her specifies that she was only entitled to a mezza serata (A-Wst, H.I.N. 10500).
79 Tacchinardi-Persiani to Balocchino, 29 May 1844: see Appendix, section B, letter 9.
80 Jahn, Di tanti palpiti, 222.
81 Lumley, Benjamin, Reminiscences of the Opera (London, 1864), 84Google Scholar; and Fétis, François-Joseph, ‘Persiani, Madame Fanny’, in Biographie universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique, 2nd edn, 8 vols (Paris, 1867), 7: 3Google Scholar. According to Fétis, ‘a sudden hoarseness which occurred in 1843 … was the sign of a disease of this excellent singer's voice’ (‘Un enrouement subit qui lui survint en 1843 … fut le signal d'une maladie de l'organe vocale de cette excellente cantatrice’).
82 See Lumley, Reminiscences, 140.
83 ‘[Ihre] Stimme hat den natürlichen Prozeß durchgemacht; sie war damals nicht brillant und ist es nun noch weniger. Die Tacchinardi-Persiani wird immer am meisten in Arien brilliren, weil ihrem Organ für die Ensembles die Kraft fehlt und ein Forciren dasselbe schneidend erscheinen läßt.’ Der Wanderer (19 April 1845), 374.
84 ‘Again, the limitations of her voice, as well as an imperfect intonation, spoiled the ensembles’ (‘In den Ensembles schadete wieder die Unzulänglichkeit ihrer Stimme und ein mitunter unreines Intonieren’). Der Wanderer (2 May 1845), 418.
85 Wiener Zeitschrift für Kunst, Literatur, Theater und Mode (19 and 24 April 1845), 323.
86 ‘Celebritäten werden nicht geboren, sie werden gemacht.’ Der Wanderer (3 April 1845), 318.
87 ‘I don't see why for five or six years in a row one should listen to the same singers in the same operas, and why one should accord the privilege of singing in Vienna only to a certain number of singers’ (‘Ich sehe gar nicht ein, warum man fünf oder sechs Jahre nach einander dieselben Opern von denselben Sängerin hören soll, und warum nur eine gewisse Anzahl von Künstlern das Privilegium genießen solle, in Wien zu singen’). Der Wanderer (3 April 1845), 318.
88 Recent scholarship on the dissemination of Italian opera beyond Europe include Walton, Benjamin, ‘Rossini in Sudamerica’, Bollettino del Centro Rossiniano di Studi 51 (2011), 111–36Google Scholar; Walton, , ‘Italian Operatic Fantasies in Latin America’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies 17 (2012), 460–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Martin, George, Verdi in America: From Oberto to Rigoletto (Rochester, NY, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Tacchinardi-Persiani's career after the 1845 season in Vienna, see Ciarlantini, Giuseppe Persiani, 169–78.
89 See Vellutini, ‘Cultural Engineering’, 226–305.
90 A growing body of scholarly literature has focused on the category of cosmopolitanism as a linchpin of a fluid set of ideologies and practices revealing these tensions, and musicologists have recently discussed this category in relation to nineteenth-century music historiography. For an overview, see Dana Gooley's introduction to the Colloquy ‘Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Nationalism, 1848–1914’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 66 (2013), 521–9, as well as Minor, Ryan, ‘Beyond Heroism: Music, Ethics, and Everyday Cosmopolitanism’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 66 (2013), 529–34Google Scholar; and Cristina Magaldi, ‘Cosmopolitanism and Music in the Nineteenth Century’, Oxford Handbooks Online (Music, Musicology and Music History) (2016). The relationship between cosmopolitanism, capitalism, anti-Semitism, and music discourses has been examined, among others, in Diana Hallman, Opera, Liberalism, and Antisemitism in Nineteenth-Century France: The Politics of Halévy's ‘La Juive’ (Cambridge, 2002); Steinberg, Michael P., ‘Mendelssohn's Music and German-Jewish Culture: An Intervention’, The Musical Quarterly 83 (1999), 31–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gooley, Dana, ‘Meyerbeer, Eclecticism, and Operatic Cosmopolitanism’, The Musical Quarterly 99 (2017), 166–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
91 Everist, ‘The Music of Power’, 703–4.
92 Everist, ‘The Music of Power’, 705, where the case of Alexandre Aguado's involvement in operatic enterprises in Paris, Naples and London is discussed ‘as an attempt to build a pan-European operatic power base centered in Paris’.
93 See Renner, Gerhard, ed., Die Nachlässe in der Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek (Vienna, 1993), 8–9Google Scholar.
94 ‘La prego … rispetti’: the copyist of the letter must have mistakenly left out a verb.
95 Carlo Severini, the impresario of the Théâtre-Italien in partnership with Édouard Robert, died in the fire that destroyed the Salle Favart, home of the company, during the night between January 14 and 15, 1838.